Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ Learned critics, pitifully comprehending the fathomless ignorance of the people, began to give lectures on the "Ring" to large audiences, mostly of ladies, through whom in course of time a certain amount of information percolated and reached the husbands—the somewhat circuitous, but only possible method by which aesthetic knowledge can be conveyed to the American male. Women are hopeless idealists! It is not enough for them that their brothers or husbands should pay for the seats at the opera and accompany them there, clad in irreproachable evening dress. ”

“ Its ideals are those of celibacy and asceticism, the products of an age whose theories and practices as regards sex-relationships can have no echo in modern civilization. What more natural than that Wagner should fling himself, for mental and emotional relief, into a story throbbing with human love and marriage? Neither would some calm domestic drama serve, some story of the nursery or hearth-stone, dealing with the relations of one fond husband and father, one doting mother and child. As a contrast to the asceticism and celibacy of Parsifal we have in Bluebeard rampant and tropical polygamy ”

“ Fatima, three lutes, an arch-lute, and a pianola; Mustapha a bass-drum and a harpsichord; and Sister Anne a pair of virginals. (An exquisite touch, this!) To Bluebeard's servants are allotted barrel-organs, accordions, jews'-harps, mandolins, bagpipes, and triangles. All this gives a tonal splendor that simply beggars description.
When the combat is over and Bluebeard's immense body is prone and lifeless in the dust, Wagner suddenly leaves tragedy and gives us a melodious duet between the brother and sister on the theme: "What can equal a brother's love?" ”

“ This master work enunciates the world law that Woman (symbolized by Fatima, Seventh Wife, singing actress) is determined to marry once at any cost; and that Man (symbolized by Bluebeard, baritone) is determined, if he marries at all, to marry as thoroughly and as often as possible. It holds up to scorn the marriage of ambition and convenience on the one hand, but on the other, pursues with wrath and vengeance the law-breaker, the indiscriminate love-winner, the wife-collector and wife-slayer ”

“ They wish them to sit erect, keep awake, and look intelligent, and it is but just to say that many of them succeed in doing so. The art-form known as the lecture-recital, then, has succeeded in forcibly educating so large a section of the public that immense audiences gather at the Metropolitan Opera House, one-half of them at least, in a state of such chastened susceptibility and erudition that the Tetralogy of Wagner has no terrors for them. ”

“ Several motives are so dexterously woven into one gush of melody that they cannot be disentangled by any ordinary method, and have to be wrenched apart by the enthusiast, who employs, when milder means fail, a sort of intellectual dynamite to extricate the meaning from the score. ”

“ We have a striking example here of Wagner's power of modifying and inverting a motive, carrying it from key to key, giving it forwards and backwards, upside down and other-end-to, according to the feeling he wishes it to express, whether it be love, rage, desire, impatience, ardor, or what not. The "_Losgehenlassen_Motiv_" is simplicity itself when it first appears in C major (see motive) . But Bluebeard's exits are many —partly because his entrances are so numerous—and for every exit this motive conveys a new meaning. ”

“ The world moves rapidly. This motive slips with a series of imperceptible musical glides into the "_Siebente-Frau_Motiv_" (Seventh Wife Motive) : Bluebeard enters well in advance; Fatima, contrapuntally obedient, coming in a little behind.
[Siebente-Frau Motiv]
This Fatima, or Seventh Wife Motive seems to be written in a curiously low key if we conceive it to be the index to the character of a soprano heroine; but let us look further. What are the two principal personages in the music-drama to be to each other? ”

“ We must first study the musical construction of the overture with which the music-drama opens, as it is well known that Wagner in his Preludes prepares the spectator's mind for the impressions that are to follow. Several of the leading motives appear in this Vorspiel and must be appreciated to be understood. First we have the "_Blaubart_motiv_" (Bluebeard Motive) . This is a theme whose giant march gives us in rhythmic thunders the terrible power of the hero. ”

“ Castle.)
Then comes the "_Liebesgruss_Motiv_" (Love's Greeting Motive) . No single instrument can give this exquisite theme. The whole symphony of human nature seems to rise and spread its wings in a glorious harmony of pairs and twos of a kind melting in passionate octaves and triplets. The groping, ardent, distracted, thwarted, but ever protesting bass, set against a coquettish, evasive, yet timidly yielding treble; the occasional introduction of a mysterious minor in the midst of a well-authenticated major, gives us an intimation that wooing is not an exact science. ”

“ Fatima's brothers have come to make a wedding visit to their beloved sister, whom they believe happily united to a nobleman of high degree. They have also come because in a music-drama action is demanded and choruses are desirable; being noisy, impressive, popular, comparatively cheap, and the participants less temperamental in character than soloists, therefore more easily managed. ”

“ Sweet, sweet Home!
"There's no place like home when a maid's too poor to roam!"
It is later on in this act that we have the celebrated "Hope Motive," a marvelous series of tone-pictures so novel and sensational that many box- holders are expected to drop in at ten-thirty for the excitement of this one brief scene. The motive wanders from key to key, hoping that in the end it will hit off the right one. Fatima is hoping to find her ideal in Bluebeard. Sister Anne is hoping to get a handsomer husband than Fatima's ”

“ Certainly; it would be evident even to a chattering opera-party of the highest social circles. But why is this, asks the sordid American business man, who goes to the music-drama absolutely unfitted in mind and body to solve its great psychological questions. Not because Wagner could not have evolved a dozen Leit-Motive for every measure, but for a more exquisitely refined and subtle reason. The wife is often found to be more or less a reflection of her husband, especially in Germany, therefore an entirely new and original motive would have been out of place. ”

“ The plot of this music-drama itself is made beautifully clear by this Vorspiel and lecture-recital, so that even a mother and child at a matine'e can follow the tone-pictures without difficulty; but the libretto, which is a remarkable specimen of Wagner's alliterative verse, only helps the more to rivet attention and compel admiration. I have given you an idea of the brief overture, and the opera itself opens with a somber recitative, descriptive or symbolic of the Dark Ages of Juvenile Literature.
RECITATIVE "The Dark Ages of Juvenile Literature do not afford a chronicle of greater atrocity! ”

“ What does this portend—this entrance of another theme, written for the treble clef, played with the right hand, but mysteriously interwoven with the bass? What but that Bluebeard is not to be the sole personage in this music-drama; and we judge the stranger to be a female on account of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence just given. ”

“ The housemaid thought at first that it was simply an effect of the sunlight, but observed subsequently that the halo was just as large, fine yellow, opaque, and circular on dark days as on bright ones ”

“ The ladies hanging in the secret chamber are mere bodies, their heads being decidedly off stage. When the door is opened the wives begin to sing _a_la'_ Debussy, the ghostly effect being secured by the fact that it is not, of course, the _present_bodies_, but the _absent_heads_ that are supposed to be singing. ”

“ Man of enormous wealth but dubious morals. Pioneer of the trial-marriage idea.
Fatima (_singing_actress_) . Innocent, romantic, frivolous blonde type, rich in personal charm, weak in logic and a poor judge of men.
Sister Anne (soprano) . Impulsive, magnetic, ambitious, highly marriageable brunette.
The Mother (contralto) . Impecunious, mercenary widow, determined to settle her daughters in life without any regard to eugenic principles.
Mustapha (_robust_tenor_) . Elder brother; the one who has the fat acting part since he rescues Fatima and slays Bluebeard.
Other Brothers (falsettos) . ”